Tracking with Ginny

Ginny, pictured with judges and tracklayer, at the end of her successful TD track, March 12, 2023

Ginny, now formally know as Lorra Lee Sagebrush Ingenuity PT TD MX MXJ OF VCX, passed the tracking test put on by the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of the Rockies on March 12, 2023. Ginny has always tried her best to do what I ask, but I never got the impression that she had the most talented nose I've ever trained. We worked on tracking in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID pandemic, when most dog events were cancelled. In early 2022, I thought she was ready to be certified, and so we tried . . . and tried . . . and tried. She failed three certification attempts before I gave up for the summer.

We continued some light urban tracking during the summer, and in the late fall, we started tracking in the fields again. Some days she was brilliant, and some days an onlooker would think she'd never been taught to track. She was competing in agility at the same time, and had a strong tendency to look to me for guidance when she wasn't certain what to do on a track. But in February 2023, we made one more try at certification - and she passed with flying colors. So we now had four chances to run in TD tests.

The first two tests we entered were put on by the Timberline Basset Hound Club on March 5, 2023 and the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of the Rockies test on March 12, 2023. After the draw to determine which dogs get to run in the test, Ginny was the 1st alternate for the Basset test and the 5th alternate for the Corgi test. But as luck would have it, she got to run a track in both tests. At the Basset test, she never acted certain which way the track way headed. She quartered along the first leg of the track, finally failing when she made the first turn far before she got to the corner. After failing, she completed the track with the assistance of the tracklayer, but she quartered back and forth across the track, and acted uncertain at every corner.

I was really not convinced it was worth while to get up at o'dark hundred the following Sunday to drive over an hour and a half to get to the Corgi test at the same park. In the week between the two tests, I practiced with her twice. On Wednesday, she completed a full length track with no difficulty. On Friday, she floundered through most of the track, although with the tracklayer's help, she eventually got to the glove at the end. But by Friday, another exhibitor had pulled their entry, the first alternate pulled their entry after they passed a previous test, and an alternate ahead of Ginny didn't have time to get to Colorado from the west coast. Suddenly Ginny was the first alternate.

So we got up in the middle of the night, and drove down again to Chatfield State Park, and found that the judges had indeed plotted an alternate track. If it wasn't needed to replace a "fouled" track, Ginny would get to run. In fact, after the three regular entries had each run - and failed to complete their tracks - the judges notified me that Ginny would have the alternate track.

It helped that the track was in a different and slightly moister part of the park. But Ginny started with confidence, and although she cast for the direction at two of the turns, she never lost the scent and never gave me any reason to question her decisions. Only a small number of minutes and four turns later, Ginny stopped, nudged at something on the ground, and looked expectantly from me to the glove that marked the end of her track. Ginny had earned her TD.

On track with Ginny - December 2020
 

More about Ginny and Tracking:

• Ginny's page
• The Tracking Sagebrush Shelties